The end of one career and the start of the next…

“The second point is that all monies have been recovered. The taxpayers are not on the hook for a single dime. That is exactly how our government should act in the circumstances.”

The article linked to this quote is about a Conservative staffer to minister Christian Paradis by the name of Richard Walker. The quick story – said staffer goes on a bit of a vacation in Las Vegas using his government credit card and doesn’t pay the bill for five months. He gets caught, makes a payment and then moves on to his new position of  ‘disgraced former staffer’.

Now go back and re-read the last sentance in the quote above:

That is exactly how our government should act in such circumstances.

Yes, our government should hide criminal activity, protect its staffers until they are caught, and then quietly hope this all goes away before the electorate connects this to our new and improved definition of “accountability”.

Any money on Dick Walker (I’m so childish) re-appearing as someone’s campaign director in a year or so?

Democracy, for some, is an exercise in hoodwinking voters

Disgusting:

Elections Canada has traced fraudulent phone calls made during the federal election to an Edmonton voice-broadcast company that worked for the Conservative Party across the country.

While the agency investigates, aided by the RCMP, the Conservatives are conducting an internal probe. A party lawyer is interviewing campaign workers to find who was behind the deceptive “robocalls.”

Elections Canada launched its investigation after it was inundated with complaints about election day calls in Guelph, Ont., one of 18 ridings across the country where voters were targeted by harassing or deceptive phone messages in an apparent effort to discourage Liberal supporters from voting.

A Citizen-Postmedia investigation has found calls misdirecting voters were also reported in ridings across the country: Kitchener-Waterloo, Kitchener-Conestaga, London-West, Parkdale-High Park, Winnipeg South Centre and Sydney-Victoria. It is possible that they were caused by robo-dialing errors.

Liberal supporters in a dozen ridings, mostly in Ontario, reported mysterious harassing calls, often late in the evening or early in the morning, where rude callers from a phone bank pretended to be working for the Liberals. The calls seem to have been an attempt to alienate Liberal voters in ridings where the Liberals and Conservatives seemed to be in close contests.

I guess when you are shooting for a majority with polls that indicate you may still be in minority territory, anything goes. I predict that these illegal calls, clearly an orchestrated campaign across several ridings, will lead to a slap on the wrist and exactly one (1) low-level staffer or volunteer being underbussed. I also have to ask: is it common for one party to have the membership list(s) for the other parties? These illegal phone calls were specifically targetting Liberal supporters in what pollsters thought would be close Con/Lib ridings.

PS – Sorry about linking to the National Pest, but they seem to have the best information available. Kudos to Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor. Maybe Andrew Coyne’s editorial presence is doing some good over there?

I heard a rumour

A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend told me that the entire Federal Conservative caucus was going to step down before the next election in order to sail the good ship Ragnarok into the face of the Rapture. If this actually happens, it will trigger a number of byelections. If these byelections are triggered, who do you plan to vote for?

a) NDP
b) Liberal
c) Bloc
d) Green
e) Ragnarok
f) Other

(In case you think I’m crazy, which is possible, I am mocking this bit of douchebaggery: Conservative douchebaggery)

Sam Pazzano: Whore! Future senator?

Wow. The Conservatives are scared, and have no shame. Warning: If you click this, you might throw up a little in your mouth. I did.

On the bright side, maybe this ridiculously transparent smear job will have the same effect for Layton’s campaign as what happened for Chretien in the 1990′s when the same breed of media cretins started making fun of his stroke-induced facial paralysis. Canadians were rightly outraged at the evil tactics, and took the Cons to the woodshed.

Interesting news from the propaganda front:

Kory Teneycke resigns from Quebecor

Kory Teneycke, former mouthpiece for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is leaving his high-powered role at the Sun news organization — replaced by another familiar Conservative name, onetime Brian Mulroney spokesperson Luc Lavoie.

In a surprise move, Teneycke delivered a terse statement on Parliament Hill this morning announcing he is leaving his jobs as the Sun Media’s political news boss in Ottawa and vice-president of development at Quebecor.

I guess having the ear of the P.M. was more of a detriment to the Fox News North crew than an asset? I haven’t been following this news closely, for two reasons: 1) People complaining about Fox News North seem to forget that we already have the (C)onservative TV. Stevie’s propaganda arm is already well stocked with flying monkeys, as the Puffster and Pamela Wallin can attest. One more channel short on facts and high on vitriol would not change the ravaged landscape that is Canadian Television Media that much. Also: 2) I don’t subscribe to cable, so Fox News North wouldn’t actually be getting any money from me.

On that note, I recommend the rest of you quit cable, too. I’m not going back until the cable companies come up with a more compelling business model than “pay for all this shit you don’t want so you can watch the one or two shows out that are actually worth some attention”. No thanks. I can stream the exceedingly rare good stuff from their host sites, and I don’t have to pay for 22 hours of useless, vapid reality TV and well-coiffed E-news. Been there, not doing that again.

But I digress.

I wonder what the real reason is for Kory quitting? I guarantee that “I’m bringing our new nascent channel all sorts of attention and press” isn’t the real reason. Oh poor Fox News North! Getting all sorts of free publicity and exposure to potential advertisers before they even exist! I imagine that 99% of existing channels would kill to have a Kory Teneycke gathering “bad” attention for them. In that business, there’s no bad press, only exposure, coverage, and attention. Three things FNN wants! No, I’m not buying that excuse, sell me another.

I suspect the reason, is this.

According to the release that just hit my inbox, Avaaz has “formally requested that the Ottawa Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police begin a criminal investigation to determine the identity of the individual responsible for adding fraudulent signatures from an Ottawa IP address to the organization’s “Stop ‘Fox News North’” petition.”

Indeed, Kory. Perception is reality.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Real life and some small amount of trouble wrapping my head around mind-boggling brick-stupid has caused me to be a little late with this post but I have a question that needs answering. Where exactly is Stockwell Day going to get the occupants for his new prisons if said prisons are needed to imprison the perpetrators of  “unreported crime”? Crimes which, by their very definition, produce remarkably few convicts. The crimes are unreported. That means that they either haven’t been discovered yet but once they are we can use the prisons that we already have or, and I think that this is more generally the case, we the people just don’t care about the “crime” in question. I don’t see any point to jailing some frosh for a year because he got a good deal on an ounce of weed, or made whatever lifestyle choice gets up the Conservative’s collective ass this week.  And when the hell did the Conservative Party start believing in the value of statistics again? Last month they were all about saving us from that tyranny? Stephen, Stephen, why hast thou forsaken us? Oh yeah, to pander to your base. How’s using one thing that they hate to justify (loosely) doing something they like working out?

This whole thing is making my head bones hurt so I’ll close with one more question. Now that the goal of the conservatives seems to be losing power by making  Iggy look like a good choice again, could they please stop governing based on what makes a small band of tar sands shitkickers happy?

Vote For Me And I’ll Get Those Damned Kids Off Your Lawn

As is often the way I never seem to make posts here until the day before I’m about to leave on a long trip and have lots of prep work to get done before leaving. I’m looking for a distraction from domestic chores I guess. Fortunately I can always rely on the Conservative Party for this or in this case, there Progressive Conservatives, by way of New Brunswick. There’s the smell of election in the wind in my home province and it’s already being overwhelmed by the reek of pandering. It’s a musky, adrenal scent and in this case it’s being wafted at those NBer’s (of voting age in this case) who rant about hell and handbaskets, how it was done in their day and how the young people need to be brought in line. To that end the PC’s party leader David Alward has come up with a solution. Mandatory Volunteering.  Specifically -

Alward also said he’d make it mandatory for students to accumulate a certain number of community volunteering hours before receiving a high school diploma.

“We certainly want to ensure that our young people have the math and the literacy skills they’re going to need long term,” he said. “We also want them to build the skills of being strong citizens and understand the importance of community involvement and that a strong community leads to a strong New Brunswick.”

Now, I’ve spent my adult life in the Canadian Forces so I have a more than passing familiarity with this concept (take note: if you ever decide to sign up yourself, under no circumstances put up your hand when the Sergeant asks “Who wants to get their military drivers licence?” It’ll always involve immediate unpleasantness and no driving at all) and I can see a couple of problems with this. First and foremost is that the correct, non-weaselword name for this is known more generally as Conscription, never a popular concept and which leads to another problem. Just how much use will the frequently unwilling be to the worthy causes that they’re assigned to? I’ve done volunteer work myself where I was interested in the task and happy to help as have countless others. I’ve also seen the quality of work that gets done by the forced and it’s invariably not high and creates  lots patch-up work  for the rest of the staff.  The other problem is that NB is a largely rural and constantly cash-strapped  province.  For a lot of High School students looking to get that mandatory 100 hour requirement for graduation finding a place to volunteer is going to be logistical nightmare. Are the PC’s willing to spring for, at a minimum, transportation costs or do they see that as another aspect of  volunteering ? For that matter are they willing to put in the effort to find a cause for students to labour at if there are none locally available. Being conservatives they’ll no doubt be willing to determine which causes they deem to be worthy so maybe there’ll be some convenient cross-over in this area.

Willing volunteering to help where it’s needed is a good and noble thing. It can make a person feel more involved in their community and bring the knowledge that there is something outside of yourself that is deserving of your efforts. This is what Alward says he’s aiming at with this policy. He may even believe it. We should note though that very few of the students this will affect are of voting age and likely wouldn’t vote conservative if they could. They’re safe to offend.  I’m pretty sure that the primary goal here is to garner support from those voting NBer’s who wish things were like they were in the old days and want those damned kids out of the house.

Congratulations to the Media…

… You are now officially complicit in Prime Monster Harper’s efforts to distract Canadians from what really matters by introducing a classic red herring – namely, the ‘sexist’ language in our national anthem.

Hey, Look over here!

So the government is concerned about women. Explain this to me in that context:

The (labour and women’s groups) coalition’s report points out the government’s decision to eliminate the phrase “gender equality” from the mandate of Status of Women Canada, the country’s primary institution responsible for gender equality. It also highlights the closing of 12 of 16 Status of Women offices and the elimination of funding to a program for court challenges related to equality rights.

Read more:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/02/22/women-gender-equality-un.html#ixzz0hDGXAWJS

Or this, from the Toronto Star:

As the federal government prepares to roll out a new budget on Thursday, a new study by a Queen’s University professor argues that men are seeing a disproportionate share of the benefits of Ottawa’s record spending over the past year.

According to Kathleen Lahey’s analysis, women have only received about 7 to 22 per cent of federal infrastructure spending, because they are under-represented in the construction, manufacturing and engineering industries.

By Lahey’s calculations, women are also not getting as much as men out of the billions Ottawa has committed to corporate, GST and personal-income tax cuts. And though women represent around 50 per cent of the population, they’re only seeing roughly a third of the enhancements to the employment-insurance program, according to Lahey’s study.

Yep, feeling the love you have for women, Stevie boy.  Oh, and nice job appointing that begging-to-be-tasered meat puppet Helena Guergis to lead the march backward.

I have a suggestion. How about “By all thy scum’s command”? Certainly fits the circumstances, don’t it?

Devil’s Advocate

As a follow-up from Kevvy’s post on the absolutely breathtaking inhumanity of Pat Robertson, particularly in regard to the Haitian disaster, I give you video evidence of the greatest single exhibition of assholatry in human history:

I take some small measure of enjoyment from the look on his confederate’s face – watch again and see how she’s barely suppressing her disgust.

So, sowing discord, taking joy from the misfortunes of others, preaching prejudice and hatred… Who’s the agent of ‘satan’, Pat?

Actually, I take that back – if I’m going to invoke the concept of religion to criticize this putative pinnacle of piety, I have a better idea of who the linkage should be with.

In Bed With the Media

Well, congratulations are in order for obergruppenfuehrer Defense Minister Peter MacKay, who has ensured himself and his party a lifetime exemption from scrutiny by CTV News by becoming engaged to be married to Jana Juginovic, a producer.  Unless, of course, history repeats itself, and she breaks up with him and moves to the CBC.

The future Mrs. MacKay should move into documentaries – they always say that to be a good documentarian, you need to empathize with and experience what others are feeling. At least now she’ll get a first-hand (?) experience of what the Conservatives are doing to the rest of the country.

Comments, dear readers, are invited – send your congratulatory messages through us, we’ll make sure they get passed on to the happy couple.